Highlander Research and Education Center

Education at the Highlander Center

Highlander developed an education philosophy and practice to support participants from marginalized communities who share and analyze their experiences in order to bring about social change. Myles Horton, one of Highlander's founders, was very influential in the development of Highlander's educational methods (which he called ‘education for social change’) until his death in 1990. Workshops develop relationships through which participants find commonalities and differences, analyze their situations and explore new ideas for strategies in order to return home stronger and better prepared to address issues and build long-lasting efforts with other groups. Highlander staff also visit and work in local communities and with larger networks and organizing efforts. Highlander supports people and groups to build their capacities to strengthen organizing, building networks and, hopefully, movements. Participants eat together, share sleeping space and interact also during breaks, campfires and free time. These times are as important as the planned workshop meetings for building connections.

Out of Highlander's workshops, new organizations, initiatives and movements sometimes form. The Citizenship School programme, led by Septima Clark in the 1950s, began in the African American community on John's Island, South Carolina, and became an outstanding programme that spread throughout the South. John's Island is one of the Sea Islands off the southern coast of the USA, where families of former slaves remained after the Civil War. Esau Jenkins, a leader from John's Island, attended a 1954 workshop on the United Nations at Highlander. During the workshop, Jenkins shared his experience that the problem they had was barriers to voting for African Americans. There was a literacy test for voter registration in South Carolina that required people to be able to read a section of the state constitution.

...